


Dead French Door Lasagna

by myrifique



Category: Cougar Town
Genre: Community: schmoop_bingo, Gen, Spoilers: 2x03 Makin' Some Noise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-17
Updated: 2010-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-12 18:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/127626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrifique/pseuds/myrifique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a normal day at the Cul-de-Sac. Oh, except Tom's kitchen explodes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead French Door Lasagna

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voleuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/gifts).



> Happy very late Yuletide voleuse! Hope you enjoy this. I owed a NYR fic after losing in the #yuletide chat pool and waited until the last minute to write it, as one does. I also owe the first sentence to said chat, as Truth very generously gave it to me. Thanks for being awesome, Truth! Thanks also to Gabsy who betaed it, any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> I am also using this for schmoop_bingo, prompt: injury - minor, because I am sneaky.
> 
> Some minor spoilers for 2x03 Makin' Some Noise, as in, some of the jokes in this won't make sense if you didn't see it. Or most of the episodes before, actually. I recycle jokes. Also: first Cougar Town fic on the AO3! You go, tiny fandom!

The explosion blew the ornamental french doors all the way into the neighboring yard.

"Oh my God!" screamed Jules when one of the doors dropped in her pool. It started to float softly, unaware of the chaos it created.

"Hey, I bet I could use that as a raft," said Bobby. "'Be convenient if the boat ends up wrecking somewhere."

"You mean your parking-lot-bound boat?" Ellie asked, barely bothering to raise an eyebrow.

"Oh my God, guys, can we not do this right now? Didn't you notice there was an _explosion next door_? We sure didn't see anything to indicate this on the last Wine and Spy!" Jules was talking in the high-pitched way that grated on everyone's nerves but was a sure-fire way to tell she was upset. Grayson did the responsible boyfriend thing and tried to calm her down as they set off to check on Tom.

Ellie sighed, still sipping her wine. "I just hope we don't have to cook dead french door lasagna."

\---

It turned out that Tom had left the oven on for too long, or something (Ellie wasn't an expert in cooking, nor in explosions, and had no interest in perfecting her limited knowledge). The house was mostly fine, although the kitchen would probably have to be repainted. Or rebuilt. Ellie really didn't care.

What she did care about was that Tom was currently in Jules' living room, nursing an ankle injury or something. And by "care about", she meant "was extremely annoyed with".

"Why are you taking so much of my Jules time and giving it to Tom? He wasn't even hurt in the explosion, he just twisted his ankle when he jumped to the ground at the sound," she whined in Jules' general direction.

"I'm pretty sure 'hurt in the process of avoiding an explosion' counts as 'in the explosion'," Grayson told her, with his usual "I can't believe I need to explain this to you, you subpar human" look.

"Whose side are you on? You know Tom has a weird thing for your girlfriend! Doesn't it bother you that she's at his beck and call?" As she asked, Tom raised his hand to call after Jules, who just brought him pillows and ice. Great, now Tom would also take some of her much-needed wine.

Admittedly, it was his foot wine, but still. He had given it to her!

Sighing at Grayson's long-suffering headshake, she looked around the room for something else to entertain her. Bobby and Laurie were trying to turn the door in a raft - Bobby had taken off his shirt to make a S.O.S. flag - but Travis was already by the pool's side with them, so the role of disparaging commenter was filled. Andy was probably home with Stan - how dare her own husband leave her alone to fend for herself.

She was pondering the feasibility of creating a big enough wave to overturn Bobby and Laurie's raft - nothing too evil, Laurie was in a bikini already - when Jules came back. "God, I hope Tom feels better soon," she said. "He says he's going to lose his next batch of foot wine if he doesn't step on it right away."

"Really, those were his exact words?" Grayson asked.

"All right, his family vineyard really needs him to do the _vendanges_."

"Urgh, French. Tom is the worst," said Ellie. "Wait a second, did you say his next batch of wine was going to be ruined? His next batch of free, tasty wine?"

"Yep, that batch," Jules sighed.

"But it's our turn to get some! I know because I sneaked in our names higher on his monthly neighborhood giveaway roster!" This would not stand. Ellie stood up and walked decidedly towards Tom.

"Hi Ellie," he said in a long-suffering voice. She suppressed the instant need to slap him out of his misery. She had a feeling Tom wouldn't appreciate the subtleties of her helping mechanisms.

"Hi Tom," she said, trying to sound as sweet as possible. "Do you need anything? More ice? You know, I have this great doctor who could probably fix you right away, do you want me to give him a call?" She suspected Jules was asking Grayson about her being abducted by aliens behind her back. She had to admit, her own niceness was almost genuine enough to fool herself.

"No, thank you, Ellie, I think I'll be fine with just some TLC and, you know, time to recover from the shock." He smiled up at her, probably thinking he was adorable. She tried to smile but it probably just came out as a half-sneer - and yet, said half-sneer was still much less satisfying to her than the whole thing! She just couldn't win.

"I heard about your family's wine," she said. "Such a shame. Is there anything we could do?" Slowly, she used her expert manipulation technique to coax the whole garage-slash-sweaty-feet story out of him.

When she was really sure that there was nothing else that could be done, she did something she'd never done willingly: she _helped a neighbor_. She came back in the kitchen and said "Come on Jules, we're going to dance around in grape and make delicious, free, feminine, foot wine." Jules protested, saying that she couldn't leave Tom alone, even desperately asking for Grayson's backup in what she probably thought was a subtle way. After Ellie felt Jules had had enough time to express herself, she grabbed her hand and dragged her along.

\---

It turned out that making wine wasn't so bad. All right, Ellie lied, it was terrible - she didn't think her feet would ever be rid of the reddish-purple color, she had grape juice on her bathing suit, she was _working_ \- but somehow, she didn't mind. Of course, the whole gang was there to laugh at them. But they were kind of sweet about it. Bobby and Andy cheered them on. Laurie jumped in her own vat after she was done laughing. Travis didn't make a single remark about needing to find normal friends. Grayson got out his guitar to give them some music to dance around to as they stomped on the grapes.

Jules was laughing and telling her repeatedly that she was awesome and that making wine was her best idea yet. Ellie even hugged her at one point, passing off the burst of affection as a side-effect of the future wine's fumes.

If anybody asked, she would blame the same fumes, but for a moment, Ellie thought there was nowhere else she'd want to be than in Tom's garage, helping a neighbor at some exhausting task, surrounded by her favorite people in the world.


End file.
